


A Walk In The Woods

by Sixthlight



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Camping, Canon Relationships, Gen, Post-Broken Homes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 08:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4257084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abigail had asked, once, why there were so many goddesses and ghosts and things in London, and Inspector Nightingale had said it was because magic came from people; that there just wasn’t a lot of magic in the countryside. That was <i>fine</i> by her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Walk In The Woods

**Author's Note:**

> Set in a vaguely-defined post- _Broken Homes_ AU which is 100% an excuse for Folly camping trip shenanigans that include Lesley, and should not be poked at too much or it will fall apart. Um…sorry about that.

Abigail had had her suspicions about the whole camping thing from the start. She’d done and seen a lot of very interesting things ever since Peter had given her that notebook for Christmas – and promised to teach her magic if she passed her Latin GCSE, he might act like he’d forgotten that but _she_ hadn’t – but it had all been in London. She’d asked, once, why there were so many goddesses and ghosts and things in London, and Inspector Nightingale had said it was because magic came from people; that there just wasn’t a lot of magic in the countryside.

That was fine by Abigail. She hadn’t really been out of London – her older brother had been back to Freetown once with their dad, because _some_ people had all the luck – but when she did get to, the countryside wasn’t where she’d want to go. It was full of cows and white people who were too posh to live in London. And no magic, apparently. There wasn’t much interesting about that.

There wasn’t much interesting about anything this summer. It wasn’t even three weeks in and she was already bored. Since Christmas she’d been going to the Folly once a week for tea and talking about magic, with Peter and Inspector Nightingale and sometimes Lesley or Dr Walid, but since Skygarden Tower had been blown up in the spring she’d only been twice; they were all busy all the time, and they’d had a…guest, Inspector Nightingale said, but Abigail knew he meant _prisoner_ , a Russian wizard called Varvara Tamonina. She was finally gone, and Abigail had been looking forward to this Sunday, until Peter called and said that she couldn’t come to the Folly that because apparently Peter and Lesley and Inspector Nightingale were going out of town, on a camping trip. To the countryside, where there wasn’t supposed to be any magic.

That meant the only person at the Folly would be Molly. Abigail found her _deeply_ weird. She didn’t talk, and she’d creep up behind you in total silence, and she looked like she’d crept out of a Japanese horror movie – not that Abigail had seen any Japanese horror movies, if her dad was asking – and it made Abigail feel strange, anyway, having someone serve her tea and biscuits like she was at a restaurant or something, instead of at someone’s house. Inspector Nightingale was very posh, so she wasn’t surprised it didn’t bother him, but Peter and Lesley didn’t mind either. Abigail guessed they’d lived there for a while now and stopped noticing. It was still weird to her. Anyway, she wouldn’t go to the Folly just to see Molly. It’d be very quiet. And Molly would probably make her walk the dog, if Peter and everyone hadn’t taken Toby with them. They probably had.

“How long are you going for?” Abigail asked Peter, over the phone. She was trying really hard not to sound whiny, but she was _so bored_.

“Just a couple of days,” Peter said. “Look, was there something you really wanted to tell us about?”

“No,” Abigail said, because there wasn’t – she hadn’t found any new ghosts or anything. She’d been hoping _they’d_ tell _her_ something new. Something that wasn’t bits of Latin.

“It’ll keep, then,” said Peter. “Sorry – this is apprentice stuff.”

There were some muffled noises, and then Lesley came on the phone – Abigail wasn’t expecting that.

“Abigail,” she said. “How would you feel about coming on a trip with us?”

“What, camping?”

“That’s right,” Lesley said. “In tents and everything. Just for a couple of days, like Peter said. If your dad agrees.”

In the background Abigail could hear Peter protesting that they weren’t actually the Girl Guides, and besides Abigail’s dad would never say yes, and Inspector Nightingale saying that perhaps not, but the Girl Guides did teach some useful skills.

It was probably true about her dad, but…

“Will it be fun?” Abigail asked.

“Maybe,” Lesley said. “Fires will definitely be involved, if that helps.”

“You make it sound like I’m some sort of juvenile delinquent,” Abigail told her, because she _wasn’t_ , she knew people who were but she had way better things to do than play with fire – the real kind, anyway. Unless someone taught her how to make magical fire, but _that_ wasn’t happening any time soon.

“Oh, come on,” Lesley said. “Everyone likes setting things on fire. Some of us are just better at it than others.”

Abigail heard Peter’s indignant yelp at that just fine.

“My dad’s never going to say yes, though,” she told Lesley. “He already thinks it’s a bit weird, me coming over to the Folly.”

“Don’t worry about your dad,” Lesley said. “We’ll take care of that.”

“Do I need to bring anything?” Abigail wanted to know. She didn’t _have_ any camping stuff.

“Wellies, if you’ve got them,” said Lesley.

“Then yeah, I guess,” Abigail said. It couldn’t be worse than being bored for another week. “I’ll go.”

*

But to start with, it seemed that camping was one of those things that sounded a lot better than it looked. In books, when people went camping, they always found caves and springs and islands all to themselves and interesting things. Abigail basically got a field. It didn’t have any cows or sheep in it, which meant it didn’t have any cowpats, which pleased everybody except Toby, who was racing around the field looking for something to roll in – Peter had let him off the lead as soon as they’d gotten out of the car.

“What if he doesn’t come back?” Abigail had asked.

“Nah,” Peter said. “He knows who feeds him.”

“Who, Molly?” said Lesley. Peter rolled his eyes. 

It wasn’t a campground or anything – Lesley and Peter still had to do their magic practice, so they couldn’t really have anyone else around. The grass was wet, and it wasn’t raining but it was still a cool, grey day for July, the wind blowing steadily in from the direction of the sea, ruffling the grass. No beach, though; just a cliff, fenced off so nobody was going to go wandering over it in the middle of the night. She supposed the trees at the other edge of the field were pretty, but they were a lot prettier at a distance than they were close up.

Inspector Nightingale had wanted to know if she knew what _kind_ of trees they were, and made disappointed faces when Abigail had said they were trees, what else was important about them? So now she knew they were oaks and beech and silver birch, although she hoped he wasn’t going to ask her which was beech and which was birch – she knew what oak leaves and acorns looked like, at least. Peter had known, but he hadn’t sounded that confident, and Lesley hadn’t either; she _was_ from Essex, but the coast, not bits with forests. According to Lesley, anyway. This was Cornwall, or maybe Dorset; Abigail hadn’t really been listening when Peter and Nightingale had been talking about it. The point was, it was a long way from London.

At least they’d driven there in the Jag, and Abigail had gotten the front seat before anyone else had claimed it, annoying Peter and Lesley equally. They’d stopped at a Tesco’s on the way – Molly had packed lunch, but Peter claimed that you never knew exactly what you were going to get in Molly’s sandwiches, and besides they needed some things like bottled water that they hadn’t been able to get out of the kitchens. Abigail had never had anything Molly had made except cake and biscuits, so she didn’t know whether Peter was exaggerating. Lesley claimed he was.

“Just because you’ve got boring tastes,” she’d said. “Nothing wrong with a good brawn sarnie.”

“ _I’ve_ got boring tastes,” Peter had said. “I remember your face the last time we went for Indian.”

Then he shut up, because of course nobody was really supposed to mention Lesley’s face. Abigail had only seen it the once, by accident, so she knew that much. She was sort of surprised Lesley had argued for her to come along on this trip, because of it – she knew from stuff Peter had said that Lesley couldn’t sleep in her mask, or wear it all day, and they were going to be sharing a tent. She wondered if it was a kind of test. Lesley had taken off her mask once they got there and she saw there weren’t any people; Abigail caught Peter looking sideways at her, and even a glance from Nightingale, but nothing from Lesley. She didn’t want to stare, but she didn’t want to look away, either; she compromised by focusing on Lesley’s eyes, when she looked at her. She didn’t want to look like she was afraid, or disgusted, or anything else. Because maybe it was a test, after all.

Once Toby had been let free, the first thing they had to do, according to Nightingale, was pitch the tents. This was a lot harder than it sounded. Abigail had been on a school camp, but they hadn’t stayed in tents, and she’d never been a Brownie, either. The tents they had looked like they came out of an old war movie, and thinking about the Folly, maybe they _were_ that old. They were thick grey-brown canvas, and _heavy_ , with a wooden pole for the centre. They weren’t like tents Abigail saw on the telly, they were cone-shaped, except the cone ended about two feet from the ground and there was a straight wall from there down, which meant you could stand up inside – or Abigail and Lesley would be able to once they’d gotten then up. They came with a whole lot of rope and long metal pegs that had to be dug into the ground. Everybody else could do that with magic, of course; Abigail got handed a big wooden mallet.

“Careful where you swing that,” Peter said, then “Oops.” His _impello_ had put a big dent in the grass – or the ground, rather.

“You be careful,” Abigail told him. “At least you can see me coming if I hit you with this.”

“Watch it,” Peter said, but not seriously.

It was kind of fun, actually, knocking the pegs into the ground, but it was just as hard as carrying the tent had been – at least Abigail hadn’t been the only one doing that.

“At least these got put away properly,” Lesley said. “Not like whenever someone tries to dig out my family’s camping gear. It’s like Christmas lights – it ends up in a tangle no matter how you put it away.”

“I can’t really see your whole family going camping in tents,” Peter said to Lesley.

“We didn’t,” Lesley said, kneeling to knot a rope around a peg. This whole tent thing was taking _forever_. “But we had this old three-person tent and sometimes we’d put it up in the back garden, when I was a kid, sleep outside.”

“We used to do that too, before I went to Casterbrook,” said Inspector Nightingale. He was examining Lesley’s knot with a very critical eye. “Except we didn’t bother with the tent, and it started raining at some point in the middle of the night. It was a very damp experience all around. What sort of knot is that, by the by?”

Lesley gave it a tug. “One that’s holding?”

Nightingale looked like he was trying not to sigh, and Abigail would have giggled except then he spotted her holding a rope and decided to teach her how to tie a knot – at least the kind of knot that would hold up a tent – and Lesley pretended like she wasn’t watching.

“So where’d you grow up, then?” Abigail asked him.

“Not London,” he said. “Hampshire. Until I went to Casterbrook, at any rate.” Abigail knew Nightingale had been to boarding school for wizards – Peter called it Hogwarts, but only when Nightingale couldn’t hear him.

“D’you miss it?”

Nightingale gave this some consideration as he made her do and re-do the knot. “It was rather a long time ago now. I don’t think I do.”

It couldn’t be _that_ long ago – Nightingale was old but he wasn’t _old_ , he looked about the same age as her dad. But then if it had been when he was a little kid – everything seemed like it was a long time ago, if it happened when you were little.

“Beverley thought it was hilarious, us going camping,” Peter was saying to Lesley. “Told me to try and avoid getting eaten by rabbits. Or blowing up any useful farmland or innocent trees. I’m not sure she trusts me to take care of myself, honestly.”

“That’s because she’s not stupid,” Lesley said.

“I’m sure we can protect you from any particularly dangerous rabbits,” said Inspector Nightingale, his lips twitching upwards. “It sounds like Beverley spent a productive few months upriver.”

“I can’t tell,” Peter said. “Half the time she’s telling me about some ecology thing she learned and half the time she’s telling me off for making her go there in the first place.”

Lesley called out that she was missing a tent peg, and after some scouring of the area, Nightingale went back to the Jag to look for it.

“Why _did_ you make her leave London for nine months, if she’s your girlfriend?” Abigail asked Peter. Beverley had a lot of sisters, after all – from the truly terrifying Tyburn, who Abigail had only seen at a distance and didn’t want to get any closer to, to Nicky, who was still kind of whiny but all right, Abigail supposed – she’d met her at the Spring Court.  Then Brent, who hadn’t even started school yet. If it had been Abigail, and Beverley had been _her_ girlfriend, she’d have sent one of the others. Maybe Olympia or Chelsea, or both of them – they were kind of snotty, in Abigail’s opinion.

“Wasn’t my girlfriend then,” said Peter, which wasn’t what his mum had said, but Peter wasn’t home that much, so maybe his mum had been wrong – Abigail’s dad probably thought all sorts of things about her that weren’t true. But then, she thought Peter’s mum paid a lot more attention to Peter than her dad did to Abigail. After all, she only had Peter to pay attention to. “And like Lesley says, Bev’s smart – she wasn’t going to cause a diplomatic incident. Unlike some Rivers I could name.”

“She said Isis was teaching her how to shoot, while she was upriver,” said Lesley. “I’d keep that in mind, if I were you.”

“She never mentioned that.” Peter pulled a face. “Not that Bev needs a gun to be intimidating.”

*

They did build a fire that evening, like Lesley had promised. It took a lot longer than Abigail had thought it would, starting with finding enough fallen wood for it – it had to be dry, too, which took a while to find, since it had been raining earlier in the week. Peter got very excited about oxygen and gas flow and combustion temperatures, and Nightingale said that he didn’t know about the technical terms but he _did_ know how to build a fire. It was sort of interesting if you were worried you were ever going to need to build a fire to stay warm, something Abigail didn’t really see  in her future. It got a lot more interesting when it came time to light it.

“Who wants to do the honours?” Nightingale asked.

“Isn’t that cheating, though?” Peter wanted to know. “I mean, drop a couple of fireballs on there and it’ll go right up, but why work so hard to build it properly if we’re going to do that?”

“Then do it delicately,” said Nightingale. “If you think you can.”

Abigail expected Lesley to volunteer, but she didn’t say anything, and Peter and Nightingale were sort of…not looking at her. Now Abigail thought about it, there’d been a kind of sharpness about the way she and Peter talked to each other, in the car; something funny was going on. And Nightingale was…watching her, out of the corner of his eye, all the time. Something wasn’t right. Abigail wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it was.

“Delicately,” Peter was saying. “Okay.”

Abigail caught herself leaning forward a little, to see the magic, and made herself lean back; she didn’t want it to look like she was a kid hoping to see a magic trick. She’d seen _heaps_ of magic by now. But it still made her heart jump a little when Peter exhaled, and frowned at the careful stack of wood and what Nightingale called kindling, the small dry sticks and leaves. He lifted his hand, and a small bright ball of light sailed – too quickly for Abigail’s eye to follow properly – into the base of the stack. There was a muffled _whump_ , a wave of heat that made Abigail’s face prickle, and the bright crackle of flame.

“Nicely done,” said Nightingale, and Peter looked pleased – and like he didn’t want to look _too_ pleased. Lesley…Abigail couldn’t tell what Lesley was thinking from her face. Nothing about it made sense.

They cooked sausages over the fire for dinner – Toby had his raw – and then there wasn’t very much to do; Nightingale suggested they go to bed so they could get an early start. It wasn’t even that late.

“That reminds me,” Peter said. “Anybody need to charge anything? I brought a solar charger. The connection on the car charger’s a bit dodgy in the Jag, and there’s no reason for us to run it anyway.”

“Can I charge my phone?” Abigail asked right away. “I didn’t realise how much it’d run down on the drive, it’s nearly flat.”

Peter accepted hers; Lesley said she was all right.

“Honestly, like it’d be the end of the world if your phone died.”

“Fine then,” Peter said, and it wasn’t in very good humour.

“I think mine will last,” said Nightingale. “But I hadn’t thought of that. What do you mean, _solar_?”

That got them all a five-minute explanation from Peter about solar panels – Abigail timed it – but half-way through Lesley started to mess with the fire, instead, rearranging the burning logs, and Abigail felt somehow like something had been diffused. She just wasn’t sure what.

She and Lesley were sharing a tent. It was more room than they really needed for just the two of them, but Abigail they couldn’t exactly stay in the same tent as Inspector Nightingale and Peter. Her dad _definitely_ wouldn’t have stood for that. And it would have been weird, even if it was just Peter and Nightingale was old.

“So what sort of magic are you going to learn out here?” she asked Lesley.

“None,” Lesley said. “That’s not why we’re here. Doesn’t matter, really. At least we’re getting out of the Folly for a bit.”

“Oh.” That was disappointing; Abigail knew she wasn’t going to get taught magic _yet_ , but she liked seeing it. Besides, if she saw it often enough maybe she could work out how it was done. She’d figured out Lesley had done something like that.

“Don’t know why you care – it’s usually not that interesting, watching magic.”

 “Sometimes it is. Anyway – you wanted to learn magic, you must think it’s interesting.”

“I didn’t,” Lesley said. She sounded tired. “But I had to.”

“Do you mean Nightingale made you? I thought Peter said you learned how to do it on your own.”

“It’s a long story.” Lesley’s voice was annoyed now. “Why do _you_ want to learn magic, anyway? I know about that silly promise Peter made you.”

“Because – it’s _magic_ ,” said Abigail. What sort of question was that? “Real magic. And there’s all this – stuff out there, magical stuff, and most people don’t know about it. And you get to, and so does Peter. And I want to know about all of it. Don’t you?”

“Peter.” Lesley snorted. “God, you sound like him – wanting to _know_. There’s some stuff you’re better off not knowing, you know. Stuff you wish you didn’t know. But Peter never got that.”

 “Are you and Peter mad at each other about something?” Abigail asked,

“What makes you say that?”

“Seems like you are, that’s all.”

Lesley didn’t reply. Abigail gave her a generous ten seconds, then said “So?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Lesley said flatly. “Go to sleep.”

“Is it something to do with Skygarden?” Abigail asked, because when she thought about it, the last time Peter and Lesley had really been nice to each other in front of her had been before then, before the building had come down. Only one person had died – the person who’d blown it up, which Abigail thought served him about right. That didn’t seem like something for anyone to be sorry or angry about, and nobody had told Abigail much else. But it was since then, she was sure now.

Lesley was silent. Here, in the country, it wasn’t the regular sort of silence, either; no traffic, no people, no footsteps, just the rustle of the wind in the grass and the burble of the nearby river. Some murmuring noises that might be Peter and Nightingale in the other tent, or maybe just Toby, who had fallen asleep next to the place they’d had the fire. It was _uncanny_ , was what it was.

“Yeah,” Lesley said, just when Abigail was sure she’d fallen asleep, and been most of the way there herself. “It’s something to do with Skygarden. But don’t ask what. It’s just – he’s mad about something that happened at Skygarden.”

 “Oh, okay,” Abigail said, because she didn’t know what else _to_ say. “Well – he’ll get over it eventually, right? It’s Peter. He doesn’t stay mad at anyone very long.”

“Right,” Lesley said. “Eventually. Sure.”

*

The next day, Inspector Nightingale announced they were all learning how to use a map and compass.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Peter said, “but we have advanced in direction-finding technology _very slightly_ over the last seventy years.”

“Indeed,” said Nightingale. “Which I’m sure will be very handy when you forget to turn your mobile phone off and turn the internal workings into sand.”

“Or your battery dies,” pointed out Abigail. It wasn’t that she actually _wanted_ to learn to use a map and compass but if they were going to hang around in the countryside they might as well do something new.

“Yeah, but where are we going to end up that we can’t just pull someone over and flash our warrant card?” Lesley wanted to know. “We work out of London. You have to _try_ to avoid people. If we’re down to a map and compass we’re doing it wrong.”

“Sometimes ‘doing it wrong’ is the only option you have,” said Nightingale matter-of-factly; Lesley grimaced, or Abigail thought that was what she was doing. “Now look here, all of you.”

The map and compass he was demonstrating with looked about as old as the tents did; the map was on paper so old it was yellow, the creases worn in, and the compass was rimmed with brass and the compass points were engraved into it.

“This can’t possibly be accurate anymore,” Peter said. “It’s got to be a pre-war survey, and those cliffs will have eroded -”

“For the purposes of demonstration,” Nightingale interrupted him, “this will do. So we’ve pitched our tents here…”

He outlined the route he wanted them to take, and how they were expected to navigate using compass bearings.

“And what if we get lost?”

“There’s plenty of farms and things in the area,” said Nightingale. “You’d have to actively work at it to miss all evidence of human civilisation. But that being said, you can leave your mobile phones behind.”

“But what if there’s an emergency?” Peter sounded genuinely innocent and concerned, but Abigail recognised a con when she heard one.

“Then,” said Nightingale, “you can call me on this.” He handed Peter his own phone – which was a boring old Nokia slimline, probably no games or _anything_ , at least not anything worth playing. And definitely no GPS. “And I shall answer on your phone, and you will be saved the distraction of satellite positioning.”

Peter looked mildly outraged by this, as if he hadn’t expected Nightingale to know about Google Maps or whatever. Lesley laughed out loud. Abigail dipped her head to hide her own smirk.

“And your phone as well, Lesley,” Nightingale said, holding out his hand, and she cut off.

“How long d’you think it’s going to take?” Abigail asked Nightingale, because she didn’t much fancy walking the countryside for hours and hours, and the maps didn’t have blocks or anything that made distances make sense. Abigail wasn’t stupid, she knew how far a mile was, but she didn’t know how far it _was_ , when you walked it.

“Two or three hours,” said Nightingale. “Unless you go wildly off-track, which between the three of you, you should just about be intelligent enough not to do.”

Peter was already folding up the map. “Let’s hope the geography hasn’t changed too dramatically around here since…when was this…”

“Nineteen forty-one,” said Nightingale, “and you’ll be wanting this.”

It was a much newer map, so new it hadn’t even been unfolded yet. Peter glanced at it, then at the old map, then at Nightingale, and looked impressed but sceptical; Nightingale was almost smiling, but not quite. “I think you’ll find this one is as up-to-date as you could wish.”

“I can’t _believe_ you,” said Peter, and took it. “If we all fall off a cliff and die just remember Abigail’s dad is going to blame you.”

Abigail thought she heard  Lesley mutter _“Boys_ ” under her breath.

“Don’t fall off any cliffs, Abigail,” Nightingale said to her. “And do try not to let either of my apprentices fall off them, either.”

“Okay,” Abigail said, “but they weigh a lot more than me, I can’t pull them back up if they do.”

“A reasonable caveat,” said Nightingale. “See you all for supper, then.”

*

“Do we get to go down to the beach?” Abigail asked, after an hour or so.

“Nope,” Peter said, scanning the map. “Looks like we’d have to go a long way to get access down.”

“Pity,” said Lesley. She snagged the map off Peter. “God, this is going to be boring.”

“Well, you never know.” Peter looked around. “It might get more interesting.”

“There’s probably caves and things down there,” said Abigail, trying to keep her voice casual. “That’s what they have here, right? Caves and smugglers and stuff.”

“What _have_ you been reading?” Peter wanted to know. “Or watching.”

“There better not be smugglers anymore.” Abigail _thought_ Lesley’s expression was disapproving – her voice was. “Customs’d have something to say about that.”

“Over Sea, Under Stone,” Abigail told Peter. “We did it at school.”

“I read that one,” Lesley said, surprising Abigail. Peter raised his eyebrows. “About kids on holiday, and the Grail, and Merlin. It was a bit weird.”

“The next one’s better,” Abigail said.

“Didn’t read it.” Lesley shrugged. “It was about totally different people, I didn’t care enough.”

“And you say I have a short attention span,” scoffed Peter. “There’s the cairn up ahead. Shall we take a photo to show Nightingale we made it this far?”

“I’ve got to put my mask on,” Lesley said, voice clipped, and Peter waved his hand in a brief back-and-forward motion. “I didn’t mean -“

“There we go,” Lesley said, tightening the elastic carefully. “Let’s do this, then.”

They got a photo. It was probably terrible – they had to squint into the sun to get the cairn behind them and Nightingale’s phone was so tragic and old you couldn’t even look at photos on it, you had to upload them onto a computer or send them to someone with a proper phone. So it was like taking pictures with an old film camera. But Abigail tried to actually smile, like her teachers were always telling her she didn’t do, and they all crowded in together and hopefully it came out all right.

*

It wasn’t a warm day, but by the time they’d walked some distance, stopping occasionally to bicker over the map and compass – that was all Peter and Lesley, of course – Abigail was hot enough she took her hoodie off and tied it around her waist. Lesley had taken her mask off again after the photo, but she put it on when they spotted some other people in the distance. It was an older white couple walking their dog – a golden retriever which seemed friendly enough. The couple squinted at them like they couldn’t figure out what the three of them were doing there, squinted harder at Lesley’s mask, and said something about “your daughter” – after a startled moment, Abigail realised they thought Peter and Lesley were her _parents_. She opened her mouth to tell them what she thought about that, but Lesley grabbed her arm, behind her back where the couple couldn’t see, and pinched it in a hard warning.

Peter smiled and charmed them and they were moving on in a minute or so.

“Why’d you do that?” Abigail protested, rubbing her arm. It hadn’t really hurt but that wasn’t the point.

“Let’s not have them thinking we kidnapped you or something,” Lesley said. “It was easier just to let them think whatever they were thinking.”

“You guys are old, but you’re not _that_ old,” said Abigail.

Peter snorted. “Bloody right we’re not. Besides – catch me being _your_ dad, I’d go grey.”

“Yeah,” said Abigail. “But imagine if you two _did_ have kids.”

“Let’s _not_ ,” said Lesley.

After a while they turned away from the coast, up towards the forest. Judging by the map, they were making good time, or good time for how long Nightingale had thought this would take them. Abigail hadn’t thought it should be that long, but when you had to stop to cross fences – at the right places, Lesley had some words about that – and the ground was uneven and the track wandered, it took longer than you thought.

For a magical camping trip, though, it was proving distinctly unmagical. In books, going into the woods always meant magical stuff; at least in the right sort of book. Maybe that was why Nightingale was so fond of trees.

“Do you think we might see unicorns or something?” Abigail asked out loud.

“Why unicorns?” Lesley wanted to know.

“Dunno. Why not?”

They seemed more _possible_ to Abigail than other things. She knew about vampires, now, and werewolves didn’t seem very likely because where would all the extra mass go, but unicorns were basically just horses with a horn – lots of things had horns.

“Zach said he saw one in Epping Forest once,” Peter volunteered. “You could ask him about it. Although I haven’t seen him lately.” He glanced sideways at Lesley.

“Don’t know what you’re looking at me for,” she said.

Peter shrugged. “I just thought you were still seeing him.”

“Did you,” Lesley said, and it was suddenly awkward again; Peter made his _it-wasn’t-me-why-are-you-looking-like-that_ face, and Lesley scratched at the edge of her mask.

“I don’t think there’s anybody else around,” Abigail tried. “We’d see them.” Right now they were walking alongside a stream; not one big enough to have an inhabitant, or Abigail was pretty sure not, but they could see in all directions. There wasn’t anybody else.

“Someone might come along,” Lesley snapped. Peter put his hands in his pockets; Abigail scowled at the ground, and tried to remember why she’d agreed to come.

The silence didn’t really break until after they stopped for lunch. They hadn’t gotten going until after ten, so it was a late lunch. Abigail was _starving_. It meant Lesley had to take her mask off again; she rubbed her face like she was relieved to do it.

They had sandwiches Molly had packed the day before, which turned out to be ham and cheese, much to Peter’s happy surprise and what seemed to be Lesley’s slight disappointment. After all that build-up about the dangers of Molly’s sandwiches Abigail was a bit disappointed herself. A _little_ bit.  

It was still weirdly quiet – or that wasn’t right. There were noises, the burble of the stream and birds doing whatever birds did in the trees and the wind rustling through the leaves and the grass, but they were all soft noises, they didn’t mean anything. It made Abigail feel sort of unprotected. When she heard stuff in the city she knew what it was; this was like learning Latin, or when her dad spoke to someone in Krio just outside her hearing, too fast and low for her to follow. She knew it meant something but she couldn’t tell quite what.

Then the rustle of the wind was joined by a sharper noise; something moving in the bushes.

“What’s that?” Abigail looked towards it.

“Squirrel?” suggested Lesley. “Or something like that.” She lobbed a crust in the direction of the noise.

Something burst out of the bush, moving too fast for Abigail to see what it was for the first couple of seconds. She jumped, and so did Peter and Lesley, but not nearly as much. It was just a rabbit, running as hard as it could away from them. Lesley looked at Abigail, then at Peter, and laughed.

“It’s not that funny,” Peter said.

“But Beverley’s not here to protect you from it,” Lesley said, and laughed even harder. Peter threw a screwed-up bit of wax paper at her.

“Could have been something bigger,” he said.

“Like what? Wolves or bears or something? We’re in _England.”_

“There are wild boar in Dorset,” Peter said. “They think it’s an established breeding population. And Kent, too.”

“How do you even _know_ that?” asked Lesley. “No, don’t tell me, I don’t actually want to know.”

Abigail kind of did, but she didn’t want to give Peter and Lesley another excuse to snap at each other. “As long as there aren’t any around here.”

“They’re just pigs,” Lesley said. “Pigs are mean, but they aren’t _trying_ to eat you. Not unless you’re dead already. And besides – that’s what we invented guns for. Or at least fireballs.”

“If we have to kill any of the local wildlife,” Peter said, “number one, that’s poaching and technically we could be up for transportation across the seas, number two, you’re carrying it back to camp.”

“ _Actually_ transportation across the seas?” Abigail asked, suspecting that Peter was exaggerating things again. He only _thought_ he was all objective and scientific. “Like to Australia?”

“Only under the Night Poaching Act, being fair,” said Peter. “So try and confine it to the daytime.”

“Nightingale’d probably decide to teach us how to gut and skin it, anyway,” said Lesley. “So no thanks.”

Abigail made a face, because _ew._ “Would he really?”

“Probably.” Peter sounded disturbingly cheerful about that. “It’s the kind of weird thing he would know.”

“Besides, where do you think meat comes from?” added Lesley, with all the disdain of a country girl.

“You know the wonderful thing about modern society?” said Abigail. “We learned about it this term. It’s called _division of labour_. It means I can eat meat and I don’t have to kill wild boar with magic fireballs to do it. ‘Cause I live in a city. It’s why cities are great.”

“I’m not sure that’s _exactly_ what that means,” said Peter.

“Whatever,” Abigail said. She’d been pretty pleased with that one and didn’t feel like letting it go. “It’s true, anyway.” 

*

“Oh look, it’s a fairy circle,” said Peter a little while after they’d started walking again, pointing at a ring of mushrooms.

“Like…actual fairies?” asked Abigail.

Lesley snorted. “No. It’s just a name. You were at the Spring Court, what do you think the odds are of us running into fairies that’re three inches high and want to sit on mushrooms?”

“They’d have to be pretty stupid, at that body size,” said Peter. “Like…insects, or birds, or something.”

“Then why are the mushrooms growing in a circle?” They were mushrooms, really; white and round, like the ones you got at the supermarket. Not toadstools or anything – Abigail knew those were poisonous, the red-and-white ones. These might be poisonous too, though. She had a friend whose cousin had ended up in hospital after picking the wrong mushrooms up on Hampstead Heath. She wasn’t touching these ones. But the perfect circle they were in – that was weird.

Lesley shrugged. “Who cares?”

Peter grinned. “Because it’s all one big organism, really. There used to be a tree there, probably, and the fungus is underground, growing off the dead roots. The mushrooms are just the bit that comes aboveground, to spread the spores. That’s why the grass is so green inside the circle.”

Abigail thought she remembered learning something like that at school – at least the bit about mushrooms really being mostly underground. “So it’s science, not magic.”

“Not very useful science,” said Lesley.

“Oh, come off it, it doesn’t _have_ to be useful,” Peter protested. “Did you know there’s a fungus in Oregon that’s the largest living thing in the world? They think it weighs six hundred tonnes.”

“It would be cooler if it was magic,” said Abigail, because mushrooms were just mushrooms, after all. She paused for a second, laid her palm on the ground in the middle of the fairy ring – not touching the mushrooms - and closed her eyes. Peter and Inspector Nightingale – and Lesley once – had been teaching her what _vestigia_ felt like, traces of magic. It was always hard to sense, and it was harder here – all she was feeling was the wind tugging at her hair, and the cool tickle of grass under her palm, and the faint smell of the sea, far below them. None of which were very magical.

But there was something, maybe, something faintly warm and soft, not like grass but like fur or skin. Something alive.

Abigail wondered if it could be both things at the same time, like how people could be goddesses and parents of people in your class at school, or wizards and police officers. An underground fungus with some bits that poked up where you could see them, growing on a dead tree, and…something else, something magical.

Or maybe not. It was always hard to tell.

“Anything?” asked Peter.

“Nah.” Abigail stood up. “Just grass.”

“Shame.”

“Don’t you have enough magic in your life?” asked Lesley.

*

“On the balance of the evidence,” Peter said, “I think we might be a bit lost.”

“Oh for _fuck’s_ sake.” Lesley didn’t even bother pretending to be sorry she’d said _fuck_ in front of Abigail, so she was really annoyed. “I said we should have tried to cross that stream -”

Peter was already shaking his head. “It might have been a lot deeper than it looked, and we couldn’t see the bottom -”

“It’s getting dark,” Abigail interrupted him, which wasn’t _totally_ true, but the sun was definitely edging closer to the horizon than not. And there was no way she wanted to be lost in the Cornish (or wherever) countryside in the dark with Peter and Lesley bickering worse than her parents ever had. It’d be scary _and_ boring. “Can’t we just call Inspector Nightingale or something?”

“No,” Peter and Lesley said in unison.

“He’ll _never_ let us live it down,” Peter added, at the same time as Lesley was saying “It’s not like he’d know where we are, anyway.”

“Fine,” Abigail said, and got out her phone. She didn’t know whether Nightingale hadn’t known she had a proper phone or hadn’t thought to ask, but it didn’t matter now. “Let’s just check Google Maps, then.”

“Have you had that the _whole time_?” Peter asked.

“We were supposed to find our way with the map. Those were the rules.” And she’d wanted to be able to bring it out if they _did_ get lost, just for that look on Peter’s face. “Doesn’t matter anyway. There’s no data signal, I’ve only got one bar.”

She looked up to see Lesley eyeing her – approvingly? It was hard to tell. 

“It can’t be more than a couple of miles.” Peter ran his hand over his head; it wasn’t much more than stubble, this time of year. “Look, we know which way is north…we’ve got to be somewhere along this line. If we head inland we’ll hit the road eventually. It might be embarrassing but we won’t be lost, even if we have to get him to pick us up.”

“Or we wander onto somebody’s farm and they’ve got a shotgun,” Lesley pointed out.

“A shotgun I can deal with,” Peter said confidently. “As long as they’re not too close. It’s getting dark – really, we should keep going. Besides, this is forest; I don’t think we’re going to get any wandering farmers.”

“Poachers?” Abigail couldn’t help suggesting.

Lesley sighed. “You’re not a rabbit, they won’t be interested, and then we’ll just arrest them, won’t we?”

“You can’t arrest everybody,” said Peter.

“Disorderly conduct.” Lesley sounded satisfied. “Works almost all the time. Everybody’s guilty of something.”

“Right,” Peter said, and then they were both silent for a second. Lesley looked away. Abigail wished she knew what their problem was. “Right. Let’s get on with it, then.”

It wasn’t dark really, but it was getting harder to see under the trees. The noises around them were changing, too. The birds went quiet as they stomped by in their boots (Peter and Lesley) and trainers (Abigail), but the wind had picked up. In the dimming light it seemed less like a foreign but not unfriendly language and more…creepy. Not that Abigail was saying anything about that.

The countryside must be getting to her, because she thought she was starting to hear other noises – like people yelling, and dogs, and thuds and snapping like something big breaking through the undergrowth. But it was very distant, like it was coming through water or being carried on the wnd from a long way away. Peter and Lesley didn’t seem to have heard anything – Lesley was swinging her mask idly in one hand, Peter was frowing at the map and back up the way they were going. So Abigail didn’t say anything. She wasn’t going to be the scared little kid on this trip.

“I need more light,” said Peter, and took out Nightingale’s phone to use the light from the screen. There wasn’t any. “Oh, for – dead battery, are you kidding me? And I _asked_ if he needed it charged.”

Abigail had turned her phone off to save its battery – going through the low-signal area had really drained it – and pulled it out, but Peter waved a hand at her and conjured up a werelight to see by. It cast a soft glow across the little clearing they were walking through.

It gave her a funny little thrill to see _some_ magic in these woods. Even if it was just Peter.

“Can you hear anything?” Lesley said suddenly. They all stopped; the noises Abigail had _thought_ she’d heard were stronger, now, enough that she could say she was really hearing them.

“Sounds like dogs,” she said.

Lesley frowned, looking around. “And…horses?”

“A hunt,” said Peter, sounding puzzled. “But…”

“It’s coming towards us.” Abigail could feel the hair on the back of her neck prickling; something was _wrong_ , and they were all just standing there, frozen. Part of her wanted to run, and run, never mind the underbrush, and…but that wasn’t right either; it felt like it had at the Spring Court, when Mama and Father Thames had arrived and she’d wanted to kneel. It hadn’t been _her_ wanting it. This wasn’t her, either.

“Doesn’t sound like a fox they’re chasing, either,” Lesley said. It didn’t; Abigail had seen foxes – talked to one, even, although she still didn’t know what that had been about. There was something large crashing through the forest, the crunch of breaking branches and crushed leaves overlaying the barking dogs and thud of hooves – and strange, high-pitched calls that might have been shouting and might…not. “We need to get out of the way.”

Abigail turned, ready to keep going down the track, but Peter put out an arm to stop her. Lesley was looking from side to side, assessing. “Off the path, towards the stream. Go, go.”

Peter didn’t bother arguing, just put a hand between Abigail’s shoulderblades and urged her on; Abigail didn’t want to argue, either. They were walking briskly, but within a few metres they’d all broken out into a run – or Lesley and Abigail had, anyhow; Abigail noticed vaguely that Peter’s long legs meant for him it was more of a jog, he was keeping back to keep pace with them.

She threw a quick glance behind, and then she could see something in the twilight, now, moving _fast,_ and turning to come towards them. At first she thought she was dreaming or something, because it didn’t make sense. It was a pig. But not a pig; it was the wrong colour, and the wrong size, _way_ too big, and was that a _comb_ on its head?, and there was a white gleam that looked like tusks and –

Abigail ran faster.

“No good!” Peter yelled. Abigail’s breath was coming in great ragged pants, she didn’t know how he was managing to talk. “Get her up a tree!”

Abigail glanced at Lesley and realized that Peter had been telling Lesley what to do with _her_ when Lesley pulled her sideways and unceremoniously boosted her up the nearest tree. She got an arm across the lowest branch and pulled herself up in a frantic scramble, then lunged unsteadily for the one above; she nearly overbalanced out of the tree and her heart was hammering in her chest, but she grabbed it and heaved a leg over as well. She decided that was good enough and clung to it with legs and arms, despite the scratch and scrape of the bark on her bare lower legs.

Abigail couldn’t see much, but she could hear a lot; Lesley yelling at Peter to duck, Peter swearing, the dull thump and flash of what might be a fireball, squealing that sounded much too high-pitched to come out of such a big animal. Then there was a flurry of barking, and she thought for a dizzy second Nightingale had come to save them with Toby, but she heard Peter yell in surprise _,_ so it wasn’t that.

Then she started to feel stupid, stuck up in a tree like this when Lesley and Peter might be getting _eaten_ or something, so she lowered herself awkwardly back to the first branch, and was going to drop to the ground when Lesley shouted “Stay _out of the way_ ,” so she didn’t.

But she could see what was going on from here, and she’d seen right, in that glance back; it was a boar, enormous and black and that _was_ a comb caught on its head, and there was a dog snapping at it. Lesley and Peter were standing at the base of the tree, backs to it like they meant to fight, but they weren’t doing anything; the boar was rounding on the dog, but what if it remembered they were there? Abigail wished she knew spells of her own, wished they’d do anything but stand there, wished she had a rock to throw or _anything -_

Then she realized suddenly the other noises, the hooves and yelling, were close; and they burst out from between the trees.

Whoever they were, they were magic, she knew _that_ right away. They were riding horses, and Abigail had never realised before how scary that could be, a bunch of people on horses riding towards you, how _big_ they really were. Everything was moving too fast in the dim forest light for her to make out faces, but she thought she saw pale skin, long dark hair, grey-blue scales – armour? – and she _definitely_ saw the spears, long and tipped with something that wasn’t metal but looked sharp all the same. There were dogs all around, too, big ugly things that Abigail would have stepped warily around in London if she’d seen one loose. But even so, she wanted to climb out of the tree – it was that feeling again, the one that wasn’t hers. What was it called? The _glamour_ , Peter had said once. It was so strong she saw Peter and Lesley both take an involuntary step forward, before they grabbed at each other simultaneously, and Abigail was half-off the branch herself before one of the dogs snarling reminded her to stay where she was.

But it wasn’t Peter or Lesley or Abigail these people, or their dogs, were interested in – it was the boar. Hemmed in, it whirled and tossed one of the dogs aside with its head, and crashed on away through the gap and into the trees, avoiding the lunge of those long spears. They followed after. Abigail thought she saw one of the riders glance back, but – then they were gone.

The noises faded, like they were going underwater, or a radio being turned down; then they were gone, even when Abigail strained to hear them. It was just the wind in the trees, and everybody breathing hard.

She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, and climbed down.

“What the _fuck_ was that,” Peter said. Abigail realised, suddenly, that the sticky feeling on her palms was blood, as well as sap; she’d scraped her hands on the tree branches. When she turned them over, there were dark streaks in the dim moonlight.

“Does it _matter_?” asked Lesley. “Peter, you still in one piece? Abigail?”

“Fine,” Abigail said quickly; it was just scrapes, and she hated it when people fussed. “Fine.”

“Yeah,” said Peter. “Thanks to you.”

Lesley opened her mouth, then hesitated. “Right. Yeah. Imagine what might have happened if you’d left me behind.”

“Trust me, I am.” Peter looked over to where the dog the boar had hit was still lying. It had done more than shove it aside, Abigail was realising; that was blood and – she looked away.

“I’m imagining what might have happened if I’d just not come on your stupid camping trip,” Abigail said, because otherwise she was going to – she was going to get _upset_ , or something, and then there’d definitely be fussing. Peter could do a really good fuss, if you let him and he forgot to pretend he didn’t care.

“And I don’t blame you,” Lesley said quickly, moving away from Peter. “Let me see your hands. You’ve gone and banged them up, haven’t you?”

Then she made Abigail let her wash them off with her water bottle, which bloody _hurt_ , and ruthlessly stamped on her complaints by asking if she wanted the boar and – whatever or whoever had been chasing it – to come back. Which Abigail didn’t.

Nobody went to check on the dog.

It was getting really hard to see, now. Lesley went to make a werelight – her hand half-open – but Peter put a hand on her wrist and dragged her arm down. “No! You want to see if that brings them back?”

“Like they’re moths?” Lesley asked, but didn’t do any magic. “Let’s just find the fucking road and get back before Nightingale calls in Search and Rescue.”

They stumbled out on the road about five minutes later. Abigail tried turning on her phone; full signal, and it turned out they were only about a kilometre from the campsite.

When they got there, coming from the direction of the road, Inspector Nightingale stood up as soon as he saw them; he was holding Peter’s phone.

“Having too much fun to answer?” he said, with more than a bit of sarcasm, but then he must have seen their faces. “What on earth happened to you three?”

“Your battery’s dead,” said Peter, handing Nightingale’s phone back. “And then there was…there were…”

Peter wasn’t lost for words very often, and everybody knew it.

“There’s not supposed to be any magic in the countryside,” Lesley said. “Is there?”

“I think,” said Nightingale, “you look like you could all use the supper you’re late for, and you can tell me while we eat.”

It took all three of them explaining, in between mouthfuls – Abigail was starving _again_ – while Toby sniffed dubiously around them.

“Hmmm,” was what Nightingale had to say to all of it.

“Is it going to come back?” Lesley wanted to know. “Do we need to keep watch? I don’t want that thing running me over in my sleep, thanks very much.”

“I don’t think they cared about us.” Abigail remembered that step forward Peter and Lesley had taken, how they’d stopped. “I think they were just after the boar. Or whatever it was.”

Nightingale considered this. “There are a lot of mythological hunts, several for enchanted boar – and several associated with Wales and Cornwall. But what relationship the myths might have to what you saw…it’s not something I’ve come across, I’m afraid.” He glanced out across the field, at the trees. “But I’ve heard of the like, and while we’re probably out of their way here, near the road…a watch might not be a bad idea. All things considered. ”

“Time to hit the library, then, when we get back.” Peter put down his bowl; Toby had his nose in it almost immediately, and Peter had to shoo him off. “There’s got to be some explanation or mention of it. Maybe the County Practitioner’s records. Seems like a big coincidence for it to show up the same evening we’re wandering around the place. Pity there aren’t any local Rivers for us to ask.”

“Not everything has a straightforward explanation,” said Inspector Nightingale. “Sometimes there isn’t an explanation at all.”

“Bollocks,” said Peter, which got him a pretty sharp look but he must have been really tired, because he ignored it. Abigail knew she had a bit of a reputation with her teachers for talking back, but she was still mildly impressed. “Sometimes it’s just an explanation we don’t understand yet. It’s not the same thing.”

“Does it _matter_?” Lesley asked wearily.

“In the larger scale of things,” Peter said. “Of course it does.”

“I’d advise starting with Rhys, on Celtic folklore,” said Nightingale. “When we get back. If you’re determined to figure it out.”

“Everything has an explanation,” Peter repeated. “One way or another.”

By the time they’d finished eating, it was fully and totally dark; this time last night they’d been asleep. The day’s clouds had blown away, and the sky was bright with stars – and the crescent moon, but it was hidden behind the trees. Abigail had never seen a sky quite like that; she found herself craning her neck to stare straight up.

“Star-gazing?” said Nightingale, and she realised he was talking to her.

“I didn’t know there were so many,” Abigail said, trying not to sound too impressed, but…she hadn’t known. It was like a river in the sky; the name _Milky Way_ suddenly made sense, it was a thing, you could see it, the spiral arm of their galaxy _right there_ in the night sky. And all the other stars, too, scattered behind the trees and down to the horizon. It was beautiful.

“I haven’t seen the sky like this since…” Peter paused. “Since Mum took me back to Freetown, when I was a kid.”

“It’s gotten so much harder to see from London,” Nightingale mused. “During the war, with the blackouts – it was like this; the sky was lit up. But once they stopped them, electrification spread so fast, and the city started expanding again…now you can barely see Sirius at midnight, even from somewhere like Hampstead Heath. It’s quite tragic.”

Abigail knew that Sirius was the brightest star in the sky, as well as Harry Potter’s godfather. They’d talked about it in her astronomy unit at school once. But she didn’t know what he meant about blackouts. Or the war.

“Do you mean, like, power cuts?” she asked. “When you say blackouts? Did they use to get really big ones?”

Peter and Lesley exchanged a funny look; Abigail wondered what it was about.

“No,” said Nightingale. “I mean during the Second World War, during the Blitz; so the German bombers couldn’t identify their targets.”

“But you weren’t alive then,” Abigail said, because she wasn’t sure exactly how old he was, but he’d have to be eighty, at least, to remember that himself.

“I’m afraid I was, actually,” said Nightingale. “And I wasn’t all that young at the time, either.”

Lesley made a face, but Abigail didn’t know what it meant; Peter bit his lip on a smile and looked down.

“How old _are_ you, then?” Abigail asked. Peter frowned at her and made hushing movements, but Lesley just grinned, or Abigail thought that was what she was doing.

“I’ll be one hundred and thirteen in August,” said Nightingale, like it was the most normal thing in the world, even though he didn’t look any older than Abigail’s dad.

“August, huh?” said Peter, like he was filing it away.

“Wow,” said Abigail. “Okay.”

“You think that’s impressive?” scoffed Lesley. “You were at the Spring Court. Father Thames is so old he remembers the Romans.”

“And there are _genii locorum_ who are older still, in the more rural areas,” said Nightingale. “Comparatively, it’s not very significant.”

Except it definitely made him the oldest person Abigail had ever talked to, so she thought it was pretty significant, but she didn’t say that; it might hurt his feelings. And contrary to what Peter said she _could_ be nice about people’s feelings. If she liked the people. Nightingale was all right.

She wanted to know more about the stars, anyway. “So can we see Sirius, now?”

“No, it’s below the horizon,” said Nightingale. “But there’s Polaris, the North Star.” He pointed, and glanced at Peter and Lesley. “Which constellations do you two recognize?”

“Tonnes of them,” Lesley said promptly, leaning back on her elbows and looking up. “I didn’t grow up in the big smoke. Scorpius over there, and there’s the Big Dipper, and the Summer Triangle.”

“I know what they’re _supposed_ to look like,” said Peter. “But it’s hard to tell without all the lines linking the stars together.”

Abigail giggled, because that was true; she’d been to the planetarium at the Royal Observatory on a school trip once, but there’d been someone telling them where everything was; out here, with the stars so bright, it was hard to pick out the shapes – at least the shapes they were _supposed_ to be.

Lesley scoffed. “You can remember why a Victorian terrace looks different from an Edwardian one and you can’t remember what constellations look like?”

“One has a lot more relevance to my daily life,” said Peter.

“ _How_?” said Lesley, and she and Nightingale exchanged a look.

“Besides,” said Peter, “I can fix that. Give me a mo.” He got up and went into his tent, and came back out with a tablet.

“Just because you _can_ look it up on that device doesn’t mean you _should_ ,” Nightingale began, but Peter waved a hand, sitting down beside him. “Hold on. You’re going to like this.” He tapped at it a few times; the electronic glow on his face dimmed.

“Here,” he said, and held the tablet up in front of his face, and Nightingale’s; Lesley leaned in, and Abigail got up to sit beside her, and see what it was Peter was on about.

She recognized it quickly; it was one of those apps that overlaid names and constellations on the sky, so you knew what you were looking at. Like the planetarium, but you could take it with you. It seemed pretty straightforward to Abigail, and Lesley rolled her eyes and said “Peter, come on, that’s still cheating,” but Nightingale looked at it in fascination, then around it at the sky, then back at the tablet.

“How does it know which direction you’re pointing it in?”

“GPS,” said Peter, “and a gyroscope. So that’s Leo, huh? Not sure I’m seeing a lion there, but they’re all pretty interpretive, aren’t they, constellations.”

“May I?” asked Nightingale, and took the tablet off Peter, so he could move it across more of the sky. He was actually smiling, a sort of wondering one that made him way less old and unapproachable.

“That is quite remarkable,” he said, and Peter grinned, like…Abigail wasn’t sure why, actually, Nightingale hadn’t said anything to get that happy about.

“It’s pretty cool, yeah,” Peter said. “Besides – it’s not like I’m ever going to need to navigate by the stars.”

“Even so,” Nightingale said, and put the tablet down. “You should at _least_ be able to find North. It’s easiest at this time of year, too. If you look for the Summer Triangle, as Lesley just mentioned…”

*

It was late by the time they got to bed, really late. Peter was staying up for the first watch, and he’d come wake up Lesley when it was her turn. Abigail was half-asleep even before she crawled into her sleeping bag. She didn’t fall asleep right away, though; Lesley was still moving around, changing into the t-shirt and shorts she wore for pyjamas. It was taking her longer than it had the night before, not like she was dragging it out, but like she wasn’t trying to be efficient the same way.

“So is Peter not mad at you anymore?” Abigail couldn’t help asking.

“Not this again,” said Lesley, but she just rolled her eyes. “He’s not going to…this isn’t some bonding experience sh-stuff, okay, we’re not going to go back to London and everything’s going to be all right because we went to the wilds of Dorset and nearly got eaten by a boar. We just had a bit of a scare. That’s all.”

“I don’t even know why he _is_ mad at you,” Abigail pointed out, yawning as she said it. “So why would I know if this would make it better? I was just wondering.”

“Keeping doing that, it’s good for you,” said Lesley.

“Mmmmm,” said Abigail, too tired to respond properly. Lesley had rolled over and gone still. Then, unexpectedly, she spoke.

 “He told me I could get my face back.”

“Who – Peter?”

“No. Him,” Lesley said. “The Faceless Man. He said he could fix my face.”

“Wasn’t he the one who got killed? At Skygarden?” That didn’t make any sense.

“Yeah. Broke his neck, wasn’t as clever as he thought he was. And – I thought about it, okay? I thought about it. For a long time. And Peter’s mad because I thought about it. And so is Nightingale, he’s just better at not showing it.”

Abigail didn’t know very much about the Faceless Man – even if he had a name and a face, now – but she knew he’d done awful things, things that made Peter go all quiet; knew he’d blown up that building, council flats, like the ones she’d grown up in, people’s _homes_ ; knew he was the bad guy, if there was such a thing in the real world, almost an honest-to-god supervillain. And Lesley had said _, a long time_. How long?

“Then why did you say no? If they’re mad at you anyway?”

Lesley laughed, but it was sort of sad, like she’d expected a different question. “I didn’t. I didn’t get the chance. I was still making up my mind.”

Abigail thought about tonight, the skin-prickling sudden terror of it, in the dark and the forest, that enormous boar behind them; thought about Lesley giving her a boost up the tree.

“You did the right thing in the end,” she said, and she wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

“I just told you I didn’t, and it doesn’t matter,” said Lesley. “I’ve got to live with the consequences either way.”

“I think it _does_ matter, though,” Abigail insisted. “I mean, who knows what would have happened if it was just me and Peter, today. If you’d been…not here. So it matters to me.”

Lesley snorted. “That is _gloriously_ self-centred. But all right. It matters to you.” She rolled over, and Abigail tried to tell herself she couldn’t make out her face in the dark, but moonlight was filtering in the propped-open tent flap – it was too hot to keep it shut – and she could. It was as awful as always, but it was Lesley, and it was a better face than her mask. Abigail’d never seen what she looked like before, anyway. “Now go to sleep.”

“Hey,” said Abigail. “You were the one who invited me camping.”

“I know,” Lesley said. “Peter can’t have _all_ the stupid ideas around here. I’ve got to pick up the slack now and again.”

*

The next day they stayed close to the tents and didn’t do much of anything, except play fetch with Toby and talk and read. Nightingale had brought a small portable radio – the really boring kind that didn’t do anything except get AM and FM – and had managed to find a cricket match. Peter was reading something on his tablet. When Lesley asked what it was, he said it was Rhys, on Celtic folklore.

“Found an e-book copy,” he said. “Did either of you notice anything on the boar’s head?”

“Bloody great tusks,” Lesley said instantly.

“A comb,” said Abigail. “I think.”

“Huh.” Peter poked at his tablet. “There’s a myth about that. An enchanted boar with a comb and scissors on its head. Well, not a boar – a prince who’d been turned into a boar.”

“How likely is it they’re the same thing?” asked Lesley.

Peter shrugged. “It’s a a start. It just feels like this is something we should investigate. We’ve got people, whoever they were, rampaging around the woods…”

“If we’re going to investigate, Peter, we need a _crime_ ,” said Lesley. “’Cos we’re the _police_.”

“I’m not,” Abigail pointed out.

“Technically all we need is the reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed,” said Peter. “If we stood around waiting for someone to run up to us and tell us exactly what law’d been broken, we’d never have anything to do.”

“I think, all things considered,” Nightingale spoke up unexpectedly, “we can chalk this one down to an enlightening encounter with the uncanny and let it go at that.”

Peter made a face like this wasn’t the answer he wanted.

“What would you even investigate about magical boar hunts?” Abigail asked.

“It seemed like it might have been attracted to the magic,” said Peter. “If we went back in there and did more magic, would it come back? Hypothetically.”

“It’s during the day,” Abigail said. “Does that make a difference?”

“Have you ever met a supernatural creature that gave a toss about whether the sun was up or down?” asked Lesley. “Because I haven’t.”

“Some denizens of the demi-monde _are_ preferentially nocturnal,” said Nightingale. “But I think that’s more practical than intrinsic – I’ve known plenty of perfectly ordinary humans who were preferentially nocturnal, when given the option. Especially wizards, for some reason.”

“Why spend your day scribbling in the margins of books when you could do it at night?” said Peter. “Makes sense.”

“That’s still not a police question,” Abigail said. “Hypothetically or not.”

Lesley nodded at this.

“Nah,” Peter agreed. “But it’s a wizard question. We’re not _just_ police, you know.”

“I should have brought my protection charm. We could have taken it with us.”

“I’m pretty sure that doesn’t actually do anything,” Peter said drily, and then “Although that’s something else I want to test out.”

“It’s _mine_ ,” said Abigail. “If you want to test it you have to ask me. And let me help.”

“Stop corrupting the youth with your experimental ways, Peter,” said Lesley.

 “Fair enough,” said Peter. “But I’ve got to warn you, it’s not very high up my to-do list. It keeps getting longer every week, somehow.”

“Okay,” Abigail said, and immediately started plotting ways to put it higher up the list. They started with just bringing it to the Folly and waving it around in front of Peter. That was usually a reliable way to get his attention – be right in front of him. “Maybe it’ll just have to wait until you teach _me_ magic, then.”

Peter looked disappointingly worried at this. “Maybe it will.”

*

They got up early the next morning, to take down the tents and head back to London. Toby was doing his best to get in their way, until Nightingale put the leash on his collar and tied him to a tree; he whined pitifully but gave it up to lie down and nap after a minute or two of being ignored.

Nightingale got Abigail to help him with rolling up the heavy canvas.

“There’s something I need to say to you,” he started, which was _never_ a good way for a conversation with a grown-up to start.

“Yeah?” she asked, tugging at the canvas to get it to roll straight.

 “That promise Peter made you, about teaching you magic,” Nightingale said. “It wasn’t really his to make. I don’t know if you know that.”

“I know,” Abigail said, because she did. She didn’t _like_ it, it burned like acid saying it, but she did.

“And,” he went on, “Peter’s not going to be at the point to safely teach anybody for years. He gets _most_ distracted, and his tendency to experiment – it has unexpected benefits, now and then, but it’s not safe. Certainly not by the time you’ve passed your – what is it now? GCSE. That’ll be another two years, won’t it?”

“Yeah.” She concentrated on the tent. She could do something about the tent.

“So,” Inspector Nightingale said, “I suppose I shall have to teach you myself, if you keep your half of the bargain.”

That was so startling Abigail looked sharply over at him, but couldn’t do anything except gape for a bit. He had a funny small smile, like he’d expected that. She took a breath, and closed her mouth. “Do you mean that?”

“You will find,” said Nightingale, “wizards rarely make promises they don’t mean. It tends to be unhealthy, especially when they involve magic.”

“Oh,” said Abigail, and then “Um. Thanks.”

“I wouldn’t thank me just yet,” he said. “It’s an awful lot of work, if Peter and Lesley hadn’t tipped you off, and then there’s always the possibility of giving yourself a stroke. Magic isn’t an _easy_ art.”

“But it’s _magic_ ,” said Abigail, and he really smiled at that.

“Yes it is.”

Abigail narrowed her eyes. “So what’s the catch?”

Nightingale didn’t pretend there wasn’t one; he never acted like she was stupid. “Apart from the ones I just mentioned?”

“I knew about that stuff already.” Peter had talked about it a lot, probably in an effort to put her off wanting to learn actual spells, instead of about ghosts and Rivers and things. “I want to know what the _other_ catch is.”

Because she wanted to believe that Nightingale was offering to make good on Peter’s promise because she was just that smart, but that sort of thing didn’t happen to her.

“There isn’t one. Or not a different one to the ones you already know about – that it’s hard, and dangerous, and it takes a long time. That’s not enough?”

“I…” said Abigail. “I just want to know _why_.”

The thing was, she wasn’t Peter, who was smart, even when he pretended not to be, and knew all sorts of things, and went toe-to-toe with evil magicians and vampire ghosts and Lady Ty and survived. She wasn’t Lesley, who Peter said was the best copper he knew and who’d had her face fall off and put on a mask and come back to work and didn’t let anybody treat her differently. Abigail knew she wasn’t stupid, but she didn’t really know why they all let her hang around and told her stuff about magic. The only thing she was really good at, better than anybody else she knew, was saying _no_ to people. It wasn’t exactly something they handed out awards for, even if it had saved her from hours of hair-related torture. She’d just acted like it made perfect sense for them to keep her around, because you could get a long way acting like it made sense for you to be places. 

“There used to be thousands of wizards in Britain,” said Nightingale. “I went to a school with hundreds of them; more than a hundred boys, every year. Yes, only boys, before you ask – this was rather a long time ago. Now there’s me, and Peter, and Lesley. I don’t know if there’ll ever be thousands of wizards again; but if there are ever to be more than two, or three, we need to get on with it.”

“And I just happen to be here?” said Abigail.

“You’re still here,” said Nightingale, “and you’d be surprised how unusual that makes you, in the long run.”

“But I’ve still got to get my Latin GCSE.”

“A bargain’s a bargain.”

_Wizards rarely make promises they don’t mean_ , he’d said, and Abigail thought that bargains were more than that, maybe, for wizards. She wondered what it would have meant for Lesley, if she’d made whatever bargain the Faceless Man had offered, for her face. And about the boar last night, and why her palms still stung against the rough canvas, and whether – maybe – all this strangeness was worth it.

And then she thought about how _bored_ she’d been the last few weeks, and the glow of Peter’s werelight in the woods, and what sort of stupid question was that?

“Of course it is,” she said out loud. “Good thing I’ve already started on the Latin, then.”


End file.
